Andrew Murrison MP

Dr Andrew Murrison is the Member of Parliament for South West Wiltshire and has served for thirty years as a regular and reservist, including as a medical officer in Iraq in 2003, and previously as a Shadow Defence Minister. His book ‘Tommy this, an’ Tommy that; the military covenant’ is published by Biteback.

The last government thought soldiers on the streets of London during the Olympics might strike a discordant note. Their concerns were misplaced. As London plays host to the world, our troops have been our very best ambassadors, smiling, smart and polite.

Among those bussed in at short notice are reservists, a genre that, being front and centre during ten years of expeditionary warfare, has turned its back irrevocably on a Cold War identity as Britain’s weekend warriors. But it’s a cadre in crisis with numbers plummeting and ageing. The TA officer corps in particular is in danger of approximating a Dad’s Army demographic.

Expansion and contraction has been the warp and weft of Britain’s military since the mid seventeenth century, a process determined electively at best but generally by events. Whilst the restructuring contained in the Government’s Army 2020 announcement last month is not unusual in the long history of our fighting forces, the wholesale elective recruitment of reservists at a time of relative peace and retrenchment is. Some have suggested Philip Hammond’s Army 2020 reforms will be as far reaching as those of his predecessors Edward Cardwell and Richard Haldane. That’s probably a bit over the top except in respect of the reserve element.

Dr Andrew Murrison is the Member of Parliament for South West Wiltshire and served as a medical officer in Iraq in 2003. His book Tommy this, an’ Tommy that; the military covenant is published by Biteback and dedicated to the men of Bomber Command.

The Queen will today unveil a very beautiful, classically inspired monument of Portland Stone in London’s Green Park.

Of the 125,000 men that served as aircrew in Bomber Command from 1939-1945, 55,573 made the ultimate sacrifice. The odds for men commanded by Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris were worse than those of their fathers’ generation on the Western Front.

No-one on Thursday will call to mind the horrors of Dresden and Cologne with any satisfaction, least of all triumphalism. A fair number will harbour doubts that the carpet bombing of German towns and cities with its terrible loss of civilian life was essential to the outcome of the war. But the young men that took to the skies in their perilously vulnerable Lancaster, Halifax, Stirling and Wellington bombers opened up a new front against the very essence of evil as Britain and her family stood alone.

It has taken seven decades for their sacrifice to be marked in their capital city and even now there are those that say the actions of Bomber Command were shameful. Churchill’s Victory in Europe speech threw laurels at Fighter Command but ‘The Few’ he eulogised excluded Harris’s Bomber Boys. No campaign medal or bar for Bomber Command was ever struck and when in 1992 Harris’s statue was unveiled outside St Clement Dane’s on the Strand it was covered in blood red paint within hours.

The Armed Forces and Society report, published last week by Lord Ashcroft claims one in five Servicemen has been the butt of abuse in public. It’s appalling, but comes as no surprise to me.

A few months ago I was accosted by a bearded bloke on a bike. ‘Baby murderer!’ Contorted, spittal-flecked face jammed in mine. I’m a politician, invective goes with the territory, but baby murderer? Except I was in uniform – as a Navy reservist, a medic as it happens.

We’ve come to a sorry pass when public servants in the Queen’s uniform stepping out in the middle of our capital city can’t pass by without being ‘dissed.’ And Lord Ashcroft’s timely and thoughtful study has shown my experience was not unusual.

A senior officer I know extremely well was recently instructed to remove his rank slides on boarding a commercial aircraft on duty. The airline’s Chief Executive has written to me dissociating his company from the practice. So, presumably, his employee was acting unilaterally, taking an easy liberty that would be unthinkable elsewhere.

Let’s be clear, the uniform I wore in central London last year and the insignia my friend was asked to remove does not belong to me or to him but to the Sovereign. It’s her uniform. Offering casual insult to it does not impugn the dignity of the wearer but that of the Queen and her taxpaying subjects. It would never happen in the US, France or Germany. Try it on in Turkey and you’ll end up in a very unhappy place.

Dr Andrew Murrison MP served for 18 years in the Navy. He writes and comments on military affairs and his book ‘Tommy this, an’ Tommy that: the military covenant’ is published by Biteback

The Argentine government and President Cristina Kirchner have sunk to a new low.

Covertly Argentina has filmed its Olympic hockey captain Fernando Zylberberg training in and around Port Stanley, the resulting propaganda "Olympic Games 2012: Homage to the Fallen and the Veterans of the Malvinas" being pumped out on Wednesday. In this crude production, Mr Zylberberg is seen using the Island’s memorial to the fallen of the First World War as a handy aide in his sweaty step-up routine. The symbolism is sickeningly clear, designed to offer maximum offence and contrary to both the Olympic spirit and all sense of decency.

I salute the many normal, decent Argentines who are, evidently, appalled by the antics of Ms Kirchner and her ministers. Our common humanity demands that we show dignity and respect in death to our own people and to our opponents. St Symphorien military cemetery near Mons on the Western Front stands testament to this. There the remains of British and German dead were cared for and respected by both sides in turn as the ground changed hands between 1914 and 1918. Today, in the care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, those that were enemies in war lie at peace together. St Symphorien is an uplifting tribute to the soldierly sense of decency and equality in death. Ms Kirchner should pay a visit.

Where sad, usually drunken, individuals have committed acts of disrespect to war memorials in the UK, they have rightly been vilified in the press and by their communities and subject to the wrath of the criminal justice system. The Argentine government’s behaviour has put it in the dock of international public opinion.

President Kirchner must now reflect on the appalling thing she has sanctioned. Unless there is a suitable expression of regret, her Olympians will struggle to hold their heads high in London or to compete with the sense of honour that all right-thinking Argentines will expect.

Dr Andrew Murrison MP has been appointed as the Prime Minister’s Special Representative for the Great War centenary. His book Tommy this and Tommy that: The Military Covenant is published by Biteback (royalties to The Royal British Legion).

In 2014 the parties to the conflict will mark the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War.

War broke out in summer 1914 on the basis that it would all be done by Christmas. Four years later, there were 15 million dead and 20 million wounded. Nothing would ever be the same again and in 1939 we had the sequel.

Marking and learning from the Great War is not just right, it’s a duty owed to those that fell, their posterity and ours.

However, there is a minority view that we should do nothing until Armistice Day 2018 on the grounds that in the UK we mark the end of conflict rather than its beginning, a process facilitated by a habit of victory. The proposition advanced is that we should celebrate the peace without commemorating the pain. Not only would that, in my view, be failing in our duty to remember, but it would miss the opportunity for reflection, enlightenment and community offered by the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War and the ensuing drumbeat of battles.

The parties to the conflict have plans for 2014-18 at various levels of maturity. It is clear that each country will emerge with a very different way of marking the series of anniversaries that respects its traditions, the different perceptions it has of the Great War and the legacy it seeks. France, for example, has plans centred on its battlefields and a museum, the Flanders provincial government proposes an initiative called ‘Flanders Fields.’ Australia will focus on Gallipoli.

This Prime Minister ‘gets’ the military covenant. In June last year aboard HMS Ark Royal in Halifax Nova Scotia in his "Ark of the Covenant" speech David Cameron set out the importance he attaches to the welfare of the Service community. A train of covenant-related policy initiatives and tangibles in the ensuing 18 months have followed rhetoric with action. Number 10 has from the start been very open to advocates for men and women in uniform who are prevented from pressing their own case. They have this week been expressing their support for the government’s announcement of a ministerial committee to oversee the military covenant.

The Armed Forces Act writes the covenant into statute. It requires a report on the health of the covenant every year by the Secretary of State for Defence and we have seen the first one this week. It is a daunting task since government delivery on the issues the report deals with is heavily dependent not just on the MoD but on departments and agencies over which the Defence Secretary has no direct control. For the covenant is everybody’s business – from healthcare, education and local government to the criminal justice system and right across the public domain.

David Cameron has recognised that discharging our obligations under the military covenant demands a multi-disciplinary, cross-departmental approach. In preparing my reports on the healthcare of Service personnel and veterans, Fighting Fit and A Better Deal for Military Amputees, the recommendations from which are being implemented now, it became obvious very quickly that the solutions were located much further afield than the MoD. A quick glance through the handbook of COBSEO, the umbrella organisation for Service charities, shows the range of interests of its 180 member organisations that spans right across the public policy arena involving most departments of state in one way or another.

Paradoxically, the minister responsible for the welfare of Service personnel and veterans has traditionally been pegged at the lowest rung on the ministerial ladder. This is despite the fact that, by far and away, the most important element in defence is the individual sailor, soldier and airman. Keeping them in good shape and good heart is an awesome responsibility for which a succession of, very able and no doubt frustrated, ministers has not been given the clout and budgetary mechanisms to readily effect change across the public sphere. The cross-departmental ministerial committee announced this week is a neat solution.

Andrew Murrison, the MP for South-West Wiltshire, was a medical officer in Iraq in 2003 and is the author of Tommy this, an’ Tommy that: The Military Covenant published this summer by Biteback.

Sir William Gage’s magisterial report on the Baha Mousa inquiry is a real door stopper. It is pretty damning. There can be no doubt that values, ethos and leadership in that corner of our military placed under the spotlight by Sir William were, in important respects, lacking. However, it is wrong to generalise from the specific - and if I have a criticism of the otherwise commendable Gage report and the oral statement made by its author yesterday, it would be that insufficient recognition has been made of the overwhelming application of the proper values and ethos of the British Army during the conflicts of the twenty first century. The late Richard Holmes dared to make this point in his 2006 "Soldiers and Society" lecture, in which he pointed out the huge number of opportunities for necessarily tough young men to behave badly against the small number of abuses. Language is important, and those of us sitting comfortably back home must appreciate that the great bulk of the 120,000 men and women that served in challenging circumstances in Iraq did so with the utmost decency and are a credit to their profession and to the UK.

Andrew Murrison MD is MP for South West Wiltshire. A Royal Navy Surgeon Commander and Consultant Occupational Physician before entering Parliament in 2001, he was recalled in 2003 to serve as a battle group MO in south-east Iraq.

Media attention on combat casualties has focussed on flag-draped coffins inching down Wootton Bassett high street. But the human cost of conflict has reached much further.

Sadly, the past decade has generated a substantial number of amputees, many of them with multiple limb loss and complex associated injuries. Projecting forwards, the numbers will increase and by the end of this year, many will start to leave the Armed Forces. Their trepidation is increased by fears that the NHS will be unable to provide the top-end prosthetics and rehabilitation they have had through Headley Court.

Last year the government accepted in full my report Fighting Fit on veterans’ mental health. Its recommendations are currently being acted upon. Last night I handed in A Better Deal for Military Amputees, commissioned early this year by the government.

Andrew Murrison MD is MP for South West Wiltshire. A Royal Navy Surgeon Commander and Consultant Occupational Physician before entering Parliament in 2001, he was recalled in 2003 to serve as a battle group MO in south-east Iraq.

By happy chance, today’s third reading of the Armed Forces Bill which writes the military covenant into law coincides with the publication of my book, Tommy.

The Bill has been much improved along the way with valuable assistance from The Royal British Legion and the end product is something that this government can take pride in. David Cameron (who has written the foreword to Tommy) has ensured that the pledge he made on the flight deck of HMS Ark Royal in his "Ark of the Covenant" speech last year is being fulfilled, and has backed rhetoric with a range of welfare improvements in straightened economic circumstances since May 2011. His support has not gone unnoticed by the military community.

In my book I talk about the military covenant notion of "no disadvantage", the idea that service in the Armed Forces should not mean you get a raw deal in comparison with civilians. This operates at two levels. Firstly, disadvantage in accessing public service. We have seen this in Service children not getting the school of their choice when they move about a lot, and families finding that they lose their place on an NHS waiting list.

After the Government was formed, the Prime Minister asked me to probe healthcare provision for servicemen and veterans, and to make recommendations. My report into combat stress and military that followed, Fighting Fit, was delivered last August, has been accepted in full by David Cameron, and is currenty being implemented by the Ministry of Defence and Department of Health. It was also featured on ConservativeHome.

I'm now launching a consultation into limbless veterans' services. I'm obviously concerned about the future for the large number of amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan. Consequently, I'll be writing to NHS limb centres, service users and military charities in order to assess the situation. The responses will form the basis of recommendations on service improvement.

The use by the Taliban of increasingly sophisticated Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), and the survival of critically injured soldiers who would have previously succumbed, is generating a bow wave of amputees with complex needs and aspirations, many of who are on the point of being discharged from the services.

Amputees rightly get a Rolls Royce service whilst they are still serving, b ut there is every sign that they will struggle to access the same once they have left. It's already clear that the military covenant demands more than many civilian limb centres are currently resourced to provide. I hope that, having assessed the views of providers and service users, I will be able to make recommendations that will the government can adopt.

Dr Andrew Murrison is MP for South West Wiltshire. He served as a battle group medical officer in south-east Iraq in 2003.

When Gordon Brown dropped in for politically obliging photography with troops in the desert the only smile visible was the rictus grin of the Prime Minister. What a contrast with the new man at Number 10 passing with consummate ease among servicemen that seem genuinely pleased to see him.

Whilst our sailors, soldiers and airmen sweat on the outcome of the Strategic Defence Review they can be in no doubt of David Cameron’s commitment to their welfare. In his first few weeks at Number Ten he doubled their operational allowance and announced from the Navy’s flagship HMS Ark Royal that the military covenant will be seared in statute.

One of the Prime Minister’s first acts in government was to commission a review of healthcare available to veterans. Very quickly mental healthcare was identified as the principal cause for concern. Remedial action points were seen by Andrew Lansley and Liam Fox over the summer and are now on the PM’s desk.

We must be far more pro-active in discovering and managing mental health problems among servicemen and veterans, a stiff upper lip community that is notoriously reluctant to seek help. A new approach to service provision is needed that is palatable to veterans from WWII octogenarians to teenagers fresh out of Helmand. Innovation is key, a ‘Heineken’ paradigm reaching those that conventional services plainly have not. The recommendations have been written with this in mind.

Andrew Murrison MD is MP for South West Wiltshire. A Royal Navy Surgeon
Commander and Consultant Occupational Physician before entering
Parliament in 2001, he was recalled in 2003 to serve as a battle group
MO in south-east Iraq.

Today, Armed Forces Day, will not be short of politicians emoting on
the national debt to our Service community. But those tempted to hold
forth on the military covenant whilst, for all practical purposes,
ignoring the human cost of service at the cutting edge of Britain’s
foreign policy should be shot.

No firing squad for David Cameron though: within hours of forming his
government he had ordered a review of the way in which we deal with
mental illness caused by combat.

Cameron’s interest is no whimsy. In 2008 he set up the Military
Covenant Commission under Frederick Forsyth. Last summer as Leader of
the Opposition he hosted a combat stress summit at Westminster. This
brainstorming session for military and mental health stakeholders now
sets the scene for work to be carried forward in office.

So it seems to me that there’s political will at the very highest level to do what’s right for our troops.

Dr Andrew Murrison MP is a Shadow Defence Minister. His 18-year career
in the Royal Navy included service with Standing Naval Force Atlantic
(STANAVFORLANT) and Channel (STANAVFORCHAN).

NATO’s 60th birthday bash this weekend was completely eclipsed by the G20, inevitably. Nevertheless, it was an important reaffirmation of the transatlantic alliance that defines our most successful and enduring of partnerships. But moves in Brussels to reconfigure military assets under the star spangled banner of the EU present a serious challenge to the organisation.

NATO arose in response to a clear military threat. In contrast, the nascent EU military is simply the natural extension of ‘ever closer union.’ It is entirely political. Why else would Brussels be so interested in process and so little exercised by defence deliverables? It seems that the state building psyche of Brussels demands more than flags, passports and a currency. After all, even the tiniest of nation states has an army of sorts.

Enter the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) and the defence clauses of the Lisbon Treaty that seek to legitimise the fledgling defence institutions of the EU, extend Qualified Majority Voting to defence and security matters and, most worrying of all, introduce an element of supra-national determination into an area that had previously been robustly intergovernmental.

Emboldened by the language of Lisbon, the European Parliament approved a report in January by the committee on foreign affairs under Karl von Wogau demanding an ‘integrated European Armed Force’, EU ‘strategic autonomy’, an ‘autonomous and permanent EU Operational Headquarters’ and something called ‘Synchronised Armed Forces Europe.’ What are we to make of all that?